Primary News - May 8 2020 | British International School of Ljubljana

Dear Parents and Students,

As announced last Friday, next week 11th-17th May will be our block break and I hope that you will take some time off to relax and go outside for some fresh air, after working extremely hard via the distance learning. During the break, we will be preparing for BISL reopening its doors to students, pending the detailed guidelines on protective measures from the Ministry of Education and the National Institute of Public Health. We will circulate more information as soon as possible and urge all parents to continue reading the updates on our school website, as well as the emails and the weekly Newsletters sent out to our community.

Block 7 will start on the 18th of May with the theme of Science as the focus across the school. We hope to be able to take learning outside, conduct experiments and create innovations to help our environment. The British Science Week websitehas lots of fun activities for all ages that you can try out at home. You may be interested in Spacewalking, in which case you may want to know what an EMU stands for (see below):

EMU: The more technical term for a spacesuit, meaning extravehicular mobility unit (and NASA calls it a ‘personal mini-spacecraft’)

We look forward to seeing the students in Block 7 and wish you all a fun but safe break,

Kind wishes,

Mrs Železinger

Head of Primary

Please see this week's update from the Principal here, discussing our planned reopening procedures in more detail.

At the end of this Block, and as we reach the end of our distance learning journey, I just want to say a huge thank you to all of the Early Years children and their parents. They have all put in so much effort to engage with online learning.

I receive emails every day with pictures of children doing amazing work at home - cooking, baking, doing art, doing experiments, practising their handwriting, practising their pencil control, playing maths games, using their number lines, reading, completing challenges and much more! Through the online conferences, I have seen great progress in Phonics and Maths as well. Although we have been apart, the children have managed to learn so much.

In Topic alone, for example, the Early Years students have learned about pets, farm animals, forest animals, rainforest animals, sea animals and African animals as well as their habitats, diets and behaviours. It would not have been possible to cover as much as we did without the support of the parents and the enthusiasm of the children. So thank you and I wish you all a relaxing (and hopefully sunny) break. See you soon!

Ms O'Hara

Dear Y1 & family,

We made it! Thank you for all your support and dedication. Enjoy the block break and get ready for going back to school!

This week Year 1 have continued to write letters, participated in live phonics lessons and followed YouTube videos (subscribe to 'Hyooz Videos' for more fun content).

Next block we will focus on transport in Topic, time in Maths and writing our own stories in English.

Good luck with your Kahoot quiz!

Mr Hughes

This week, Year 2 have continued exploring the work of Carl Warner, where they have created collages in the style of his work. In Literacy, we have been creating our own fantasy characters. We have thought carefully about how we can describe our characters - there have been some fantastic uses of adjectives.

This Block has been filled with lots of hard work and enthusiasm in Year 2. I am incredibly proud of how hard they have been working during our time in distance learning. You are superstars - well done!

Ms Harris

This week in Year 3 the students wrote a biography based on the story of a woman named Marlene, who emigrated from the UK to Australia with her family when she was just ten years old. A special thank you to Marlene for volunteering to tell us her story, as it really enriched the students' study of biography and autobiography writing. Well done also to all the students of Year 3 for the fantastic job they did with their biography of Marlene.

Mr Mulcahy

Year 4 spent the final week of the block completing their online science experiments, with some spectacular visuals. The students have made sure that the experiments they perform are real crowd-pleasers, and almost could be considered magic tricks. Here we can see self-inflating balloons and homemade acidity testers. This unit has been so popular that there were requests to extend it for another block!

Students have been tirelessly working on maths units as well, having completed our recent unit on measures and now we moved on to numbers and place value, including Roman numerals, which we had a Kahoot about in order to deepen our understanding of the numerals I to XX.

Mr Bishop

This week Year 5 have been collating all of the information that they have produced for their 'Island' topic, in order to create a promotional brochure. In English, the class have developed their persuasive writing techniques and arguments for or against sacrificing a parkland paradise to enable the construction of a magnificent, multifunctional stadium complex. Will the subsequent letters that they are composing sway the decision of 'Denton United'? Maths lessons have focused on algebraic equations and calculations involving fractions, which have culminated in some fairly challenging 'word problems' for our young mathematicians to decipher!

Mr Irving & Mr Walker

I BELIEVE IN UNICORNS FINAL STORIES

It is with much excitement that we are releasing the Year 6A 'I believe in Unicorns' new episodes. The students' stories aimed to include the following: the thoughts and feelings of the main character, Tomas, as he is separated from his parents during a wartime situation in which his house and home town are bombed using as much imagery as they could muster.

The Grammar focus was linking paragraphs using cohesive devices and maintaining writing in the first person and past tense. The stories are not meant to be read by younger members of BISL due to their content.

MODAL VERBS

To continue to practice using modal verbs, the students were encouraged to design a 'fake' conversation with Mr Walton using modal verbs as a form of politeness. We are looking forward to seeing if Mr Walton agrees with Peter's 'fake' answers that he gave for him.

WORD OF THE DAY from Rem's Dictionary

As part of the Topic 'Exploring English', one of the tasks was for the Year 6 students to create their own dictionary, with the focus being on enriching their vocabulary and identifying grammar patterns in words. The students could also be very creative and design their own. The prefix to the word of the day also happened to be in this week's spelling focus - pneumatic, so using this prefix definition knowledge the students could have an educated guess at the definition of Rem's word.

Mrs Charlesworth

Besides the Maths content that the Year 6B is covering in our regular units, the students have also been steadily practising for their end of the year assessment. We have discovered a website which provides us with high-quality diagnostic questions. Each time anyone answers a question, they are asked to justify their answer. This is useful as it provides peer teaching opportunities and allows the teacher to spot students' misconceptions more effectively.

There are also videos published weekly reviewing top 4 worst answered questions of the week. The class spent some time during our daily conference reviewing angles on a straight line. Can you answer the question correctly? Where do you think most students made their mistake?

Link to the Youtube channel

Link to Mr Barton’s diagnostic questions

Mr Kokalj

This week our Primary EAL students have reached an astounding number of books read on GetEpic! since the start of the Distance Learning period. Can you believe they have read 100 books? Well done to everyone!

Weekly EAL Challenge:

Take a close look at the picture below. Notice anything not quite right? So many questions arise!

For example: "Why is the father reading the newspaper upside down?" How many questions can you come up with? Share your questions with us and let's see how many oddities we can discover in the picture!

Mrs Majzelj Kralj

Year 3 students have concluded their work on the family topic and as promised here is the book "Les animaux fantastiques" they created. Enjoy!

Year 4 has been very impressive in learning school subjects and comparing them. They concluded their "Time" topic by discussing school timetables and quizzing each other. Bravo à tous!

Year 5 took a virtual trip to the farm this week in French. After discovering new vocabulary and structures, they learned a popular song and practised their listening skills. Très bon travail!

Year 6 students continue to work on skills they will benefit from next year. They wrapped up their "School" topic by discussing subject and timetable preferences. Bravo!

Mrs Poulet

This week Year 1 were working on reading comprehension and answering questions of different types.

Year 2 continued working on Moj prijatelj Piki Jakob as well as on the text about spring.

Years 3 & 4 were working on the text by Promož Suhodolčan: Ti kanta požrešna.

Years 5 & 6 were working on the text by Erich Kastner: Dvojčici.

The Slovene Foundation groups have been ending the Block with fun ways to recap all the vocabulary. Year 1 made their own bingo games which they played during our online lesson, Year 2 created their very own scary monsters with an unusual number of body parts, Years 3 & 4 have been discovering Slovene traditional dishes and teaching their family members how to say their favourite food, Year 5 & 6 have been completing challenges about Slovenia, including finding out their class teacher’s favourite destination in Slovenia.

Slovene Department

As this is the final week of our Sports block, we will finish it as usual: with an assessment. We will give students 14 days to complete the task and send us all of the necessary videos. In case students do not have smartwatches, we are also sharing the location of an open athletic stadium in Ljubljana where students can do the assessment.

The Assessment includes:

Video of 7 different locomotor movements (Y1-Y6)
60-meter sprint (Y5-Y6 only)
Cooper run: 2400 m (boys); 1600 m (girls) (Y5 - Y6 only)

All the assessment instructions on "how to" and links were sent to students via CANVAS (Y3-Y6) and via email (Y1-Y2). Good luck to all!

Please see the links to:

STAR OF THE WEEK

Our PE Department also share weekly sportsman certificates, which go to a student in recognition of their dedication to PE Live Streams, homework and House competition. This week the PE Department is proud to present this award to Sakuto in Y4 who showed amazing work and excellent attendance in our morning Live sessions.

HOUSE COMPETITION

The points are being collected from students among all of the Houses. The House competition is one of the easiest ways to collect points for the House you represent, so help your team, CLICK HERE and do any of the 7 different challenges.

PE LIVE SESSION

The number of participants at PE Live sessions are increasing so please join in as well, and join others by starting the day with a bit of workout.

For students who missed the Live session CLICK HERE and find all the videos.

SCHEDULE

PE Department

Organisational skills

Does your child use a To-do list, maybe a calendar on paper, or an interactive one (e.g.Google calendar), Reminders or Timetables? It is a good idea they are introduced to organisational tools as soon as possible as it is a base of modern life.

We live in a society in which soft skills and life skills need to be highly developed for an individual to be successful. They help us to be able to analyse, make decisions and use our knowledge and abilities to become reliable.

A few of the skills related to organisation and time management are creating and keeping deadlines, delegation, goal-setting, managing appointments, team management, and making schedules. All of us use these in our everyday life and our students need these skills for successful academic growth. Timetables, homework, pair work, deadlines, and high expectations are something our students are faced with at an early age. Useful tools that they can use to support themselves will make success quicker and more effective. This can be a daily or weekly list of tasks stuck somewhere in their room, or colourful timetable of the day/week. Many of our students prefer using electronic devices, which add more features like sounds, videos and similar when a student needs to be reminded to finish or start a task. Smart devices can predict our activities and suggest specific tasks to be repeated and be added to a reminder list. All this helps organise a student and make goal-setting SMART - specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-base. It makes success achievable and less stressful for students, as we always start with easier small steps than the big jumps.

Apart from the usual resources, the Music Department is now using a site called Twinkl.com. It has a lot of excellent material including interactive lessons and I have had positive feedback. I have premium access, but there is free material which can be accessed by parents. Students require an access code which I send with the lesson. If you find something you deem useful for your child and it requires premium access, please let me know and I will get the access code for you.

Also please be aware that many other subjects are covered too and it is well worth exploring!

For Early Years, I have sent some YouTube videos of action songs which, apart from being fun, are also Educational. I am aware that many of the songs we did in class are downloaded at home. Good luck with the practice!

BBC Bitesize is a great resource that you may be able to use at home.

I am looking forward to school reopening but I do recommend using these online resources to supplement learning even in the long term.

Mr Calder

The Burger Challenge started out as a MEPI task, but more students are starting to get on board, and Wednesday saw the first response in Canvas on the 'Digital Downtime Activities' course.

Congratulations to Kristina in Year 4 for creating the most marvellous of veggie burgers! What with caramelised onions, and a secret sauce, topped-off with salad, Cheddar cheese (Top choice), and grilled buns - When I saw the accompanying photos, I nearly passed out with excitement! A fantastic job. I wonder who dare follow this class act?

Mr Irving

Nursery/Pre-Nursery:

Ivan... for doing a super sound hunt at home and for always trying his best during the online lessons.

Reception

Mart... for being consistently focused and engaged during the online lessons and for making great progress in maths and Phonics.

Year 1

Daryus… for his excellent work in phonics!

Max… For his resilience throughout distance learning.

Sunny… For her impressive writing skills.

Year 2

Frederik...in recognition of his initiative in Maths. He has worked incredibly hard this week and has been practising his times tables independently. Well done Frederik.

Year 3

Mark... for writing a beautifully presented biography of Marlene from Australia that included lots of details about her life and yet was written in your own words. Outstanding job!

Sara… for learning many new computer skills on your iPad and for using them to present your classwork in a clear and visually attractive way. Well done Sara, keep pushing the limits of what you know!

Year 5

Ida... for consistently completing all your homework and extra challenges in maths and your wonderful science experiments and accompanying media.

Robert… for an all-round amazing block and the continued example he sets in distance learning, thank you Robert!

Year 6A

Peter… for being diligent with your work and focusing on improving your story through listening to feedback.

Year 6B

Michail… for your consistent dedication to completing all of the online work assigned and going the extra mile to participate in the Minecraft assignment every day.

Sakuto… in recognition of his commitment by participating in PE Live streams every morning and demonstrating perseverance.

Once again, the P.E. participants and digital download entries completely shook the leaderboard, so well done to those that got involved!

The house point winner for this week is

Sapphire with 97points!

In second place is Emerald with 42 points,

In third place is Ziron with 41 points,

In fourth place is Hessonite with 34 points.

It has been another busy block of distant learning, but there has been a lot of great work happening at home.

THE BLOCK WINNER is

Emerald with 390points!

Second place is Sapphire with 377 points

Third place is Zircon with 326points